Disestablishmentarianism and Antidisestablishmentarianism

[jack]

Sometimes I feel like the Church of England should either disestablish or bite the bullet and actually represent everyone, regardless of religion or lack thereof. I like having a comparatively fluffy national church, but when I saw it did do things I disagreed with, I suddenly felt uncomfortable having it enshrined in the constitutions.

The first is the obvious choice. But the second has some attraction for me. In many ways, couldn't you say that the right to have services and get married in churches, have "moral" representatives in the house of lords, choose the sexual orientation of bishops, etc, etc, are the equal legacy of everyone English, not just the faction which is currently identified as 'chruch of England'? I realise that's likely to be controvertial to both anti-disestablishment and disestablishment opinions :)

Comments

[simont]

I like having a comparatively fluffy national church

The natural reading of that statement, mostly inspired by the "comparatively", is that it's better to have a comparatively fluffy national church than one which is unpleasant and unfluffy, and that seems like a more or less uncontroversial statement to me. But in context, it looks as if you actually mean that you think there's something to be said for having a comparatively fluffy national church as opposed to no national church at all, and it's not clear what you think the advantage is.

Ruling out arguments based on the rightness of its actual religion, what are the actual plus points of having the C of E be a nationalised church rather than just another private institution among many? I've always vaguely assumed that any secular arguments in favour of continuing establishment were more or less based on tradition: "it seems to be working well enough and it would cost effort to change", with a side order of "if we disestablish the church then it might turn out it was doing some obscure but vitally important job which suddenly isn't getting done" (and possibly also "here is a specific such job"). Are there others?

[jack]

Good question. I didn't consciously mean, "I prefer it to not having an established church", but there might be some of that. And yes, I think the reasons (at least for me) are just a sense of sticking with what I know.

[ptc24]

There's a somewhat Machiavellian argument, similar to one for the monarchy: it occupies a space which might otherwise get occupied by something (more?) pernicious. Traditionally, when making this argument, one makes comparisons to how things are in the USA.

[rysmiel]

That would be pretty much my position, yes, though I tend to think of it as like vaccination against more unpleasant memeplexes that might otherwise run free.

[simont]

I suppose the question raised by that is, why does the church's official status affect how well it does that job? If it's to be a vaccine against more harmful forms of religion, is it not sufficient for that purpose that it should simply be widespread and well known, and would it not be just as good a vaccine if it were disestablished but otherwise unchanged?

[ewx]

How on earth could anything recognizable as a church possibly represent everyone?

[jack]

Well, ok, it couldn't, but it could be better: for instance, let anyone get married in church without requiring them to be anglican, instruct bishops in the house of lords not to vote for things that only anglicans want, etc.

[redbird]

If bishops are going to represent everyone, does that mean they could vote only for things that everyone wants? They might as well stay home in that case, since any such bill would pass unanimously even without them. Even if I take it less literally, I suspect there is little or no legislation that all Anglicans support and that few if any non-Anglicans do.

[liv]

There's actually a really blatant counterexample which is topical at the moment: a clear majority of non-Anglicans support full marriage equality. Most of the Anglican hierarchy at least (although not absolutely all professing Anglicans) believe that same sex couples should be equal but different and have access to exactly the same rights but call the officially sanctioned relationship a civil partnership, not a marriage. In fact, this is a big part of the reason why the media in general is discussing the issues raised in jack's post!

(The other issue where there's a clear Anglican / non-Anglican split is to do with reform of our upper house. The Anglican party line is to keep the status quo, perhaps not surprisingly because it gives the church a certain amount of political power, though the ostensible excuse is that we're on the brink of economic crisis, we don't have spare resources to spend on political reform. The huge majority of non-Anglicans think that we should do away with having Bishops in the House of Lords. But that's kind of a self-referential debate!)

[(Anonymous)]

'let anyone get married in church without requiring them to be anglican'

But this is currently the case: everyone has a right to be married in their parish church.

S.

[jack]

Good question. Apparently you do have the right. Do you know how easy it is to exercise it if you are a committed atheist or a committed muslim? I know there are many cases where people feel obliged to parrot the party line to get married in church, but I guess most of that is non-Anglican or a non-Parish-church. But I don't know in practice, I assumed that there would be a lot of pressure not to, and that if the vicar didn't want to preside it probably wouldn't happen.

[lavendersparkle]

Well, I'm a committed Jew and I got married in an Anglican church.

You have a right to get married in your parish church as long as you aren't divorced and are a mixed sex couple. Most people aren't sure what the rules are because it is pretty odd when you think about it, so vicars bull shit and try to use the opportunity of an impending wedding for mission. In the end if you pushed them they'd back down and if they didn't they'd have to if you took the issue up with their arch deacon.

A possibly bigger issue is that the Church of England marriage service is laid down in law and so there is limited flexibility in how much it can be changed and still remain legally valid. There was discussion before our wedding about how much we could tweak things without invalidating our marriage. A lot of committed non-Anglicans might bulk at the wording they have to use.

I think the 'don't really believe in anything but want to have a church wedding' crowd tend to get married in Anglican churches because non-Anglican churches can turn your request to get married there down on the grounds that you're a heathen. Also those sorts of people tend to like pretty 'proper' churches i.e. CofE.

[jack]

Oh yes, good point.

And yeah, I'm not sure where "right to get married" abuts "without having to lie".

ObSnark

[onyxlynx]

You mean that isn't just a showcase spelling word?

(Also, I didn't think anyone cared any more.) What would be involved in disestablishing the Church of England, anyway?

Re: ObSnark

[jack]

LOL. I think I read the dictionary definition ages ago, and am vaguely familiar with the idea of disestablishing the church, but this is the first time I ever actually used "antidisestablishmentarianism" to mean what it says, and not just as a long word :)

What would be involved in disestablishing the Church of England, anyway?

I'm honestly not sure.

I _think_ the current issue was that if gay marriage were officially adopted, since the church technically has an obligation to marry anyone within the diocese, some church of England churchs might be forced to conduct religious gay marriages, and hence some spokespeople for the church spoke against the issue.

And I can sympathise with people who are conservative with their religion, but if it's the state religion, it _should_ accept everyone, and if it isn't, we should remove the special case. (The queen can still be head of it, but shouldn't have restrictions on her own religion. The church can pick someone else if we choose a non-anglican monarch.)

But I don't know exactly what happens: we presumably abandon the bishops in the house of lords (which is a good thing anyway, although I like the idea of _some_ arbitrary representatives), I don't know what happens to all the churchs, if the state and the church share them or what?

Re: ObSnark

[alextiefling]

I _think_ the current issue was that if gay marriage were officially adopted, since the church technically has an obligation to marry anyone within the diocese, some church of England churchs might be forced to conduct religious gay marriages, and hence some spokespeople for the church spoke against the issue.

While this has been claimed, it is untrue. The government's consultation, in fact, shows that their current thinking goes much too far in the other direction, and would prevent religious same-sex marriages even if the religious authorities wanted to conduct them.

Of course, it's in the interest of certain people within the church to make false claims about how the eeevil and oppressive authorities might make them be nice to us queers.

Re: ObSnark

[jack]

*headache* Thank you. (Sorry.)

It seems bizarre that people should be PREVENTED from having an egalitarian religion. (I can think of some reasons that might matter, such as requiring an impartial regristrar as an observer to ensure there's no coersion, but I'm not sure why that would apply in cases where heterosexual marriages are ok.)

Re: ObSnark

[kerrypolka]

Yeah, it's really bizarre and hateful. As you can guess the Quakers and Liberal and Reform Jews UK (among others) are extremely unhappy about it.

Re: ObSnark

[eudoxiafriday.wordpress.com]

(oops, just commented as anonymous by mistake, it was me ...)

Re: ObSnark

[lavendersparkle]

Also, as a mentioned above, there is already precedent for allowing CofE churches to refuse to marry couples on a specific doctrinal grounds, because they are not obliged to marry divorcees whose ex is still living to accommodate CofE churches which don't believe in divorce.